The eBay Murder Victim Revealed August 1 POSTPONED DUE TO DEADNESS

Some called me twisted and weird and one woman even compared me to the canibal in Germany. But most people thought it was cool ... and a little twisted and weird. Read about it here.

Read about the revealing here.

The auction was canceled by eBay.

I wasn’t surprised..

One of the reasons they gave was the list of publishers I put on the auction page so the bidders would know they would have a genuine chance of being in a published book. It was a credibility thing. eBay said it was key word manipulation.

They made it clear that, though they were canceling my auction, they were keeping my money.

I started the auction up again - without a list of publishers - and then one more time before I finally got a victim who paid big bucks ($52 ... the original auction was well into the hundreds of dollars before it was canceled.) to be murdered in a novel. The victim’s identity will be revealed soon. The picture above shows the victim ... um ... dead ... or alive?

Now, take a close look at the person holding the menu ...

Is this someone you know? When was the last time you saw this person?

About Murder by Burger

Set in a city permanently enshrouded by fog because of global warming, Murder by Burger, is a satirical mystery that pokes fun at corporate insanity and the ultimate fast food. Investigative consultant, Boston Johnson, is sent of make a referral on the apparent suicide of Gansheng Barto, the president of the world’s largest fast food empire, Barto Burger, makers of the world’s first completely cloned hamburger. Every burger is cloned from a single perfect burger.

Barto’s suicide is strange. He’s eaten himself to death on hamburgers. Even stranger, though, he was a vegetarian. A series of equally strange deaths follow and Boston is convinced this is somehow murder.

But looking for clues at Barto Burger headquarters is even stranger, the building is fashioned after a European Gothic cathedral, except that it’s 700 feet high and, because the city is permanently fogged in, nobody has ever seen the entire building at once. The employees wear robes and hoods like monks from feudal Europe. They do the dirty in porcelain bowls. The women are hot ... when they’re not trying to kill you or get you plastered on rubbing alcohol. The men are weird ... either trying to stare you down or clone a 60s rock band ... and then murder you.

With his rubby-swilling lady friend, Marlee, Boston uncovers a chilling secret deep in the catacombs under the building. But that turns out to be small potatoes compared to the truly horrifying secret behind the murders.

Murder Sampler

Murder by Burger - Weird Beginnings, Late Endings

In 1988, I started a novel called Men In Weird Shirts. About ten pages into a story that was going nowhere because all I really had was what I thought was a catchy title, I scrapped the project and started a novel called BigCrunch (that was somehow inspired by the Weird Shirts story) about a French detective bloodhound called Fleaboat who solved cases with the help of a kid who had built the world’s most powerful computer - in his parents’ basement. The dog spoke a mixture of French Canadianese and NewfieSpeak. It took thirty pages to convince me that I was writing drivel again.

I couldn’t shake the idea of the dog though. Then, a few months later, I was reading Big Mac: The Unauthorized Story of McDonald’s. Like a flash of lightning straight up the ass, the idea came to me. Barto Burger. Cloned hamburgers. A corporate structure more religion than business. A murder. A French detective bloodhound to solve the case.

It was an on-and-off again thing for years. I wrote three novels before I finally came back to the original research. The French detective bloodhound disappeared somewhere in the plotting and characterization phases, but the burgers and mayhem in a corporate headquarters building fashioned after the giant Gothic churches of Europe and the idea for a truly weird detective-like character grew into Boston Jonson, CI Extraordinaire.

But it still wasn’t a smooth trip. Sixty some odd pages in, I started to lose the thread of the story. I put it aside and wrote short fiction and marketing stuff for about two years before coming back with the rest of the story somehow worked out in the back of my head deep under layers of subconscious gray matter and daydreams.

Now, the novel’s finished. Done. Over with.

Anyone know of a good agent who will represent a weird author?

Writing at The Second Cup Coffee Shop